I have little sympathy for Petraeus or for Allen. Both men should have used far better judgment with regard to the people they got involved with. The US takes matters of sex and infidelity much differently than does, say, Europe. They operated in the context of American mores and doubtless knew they were pushing the limits. If they wanted to stay at the top of their professions they should have made sure their behavior was impeccable. They didn't.

... a Tampa socialite feels harrassed by some private emails received from another woman (who's just published a biography about the currently most revered US general, a friend of whatever nature of the Tampa socialite), who accuses her of having touched the general "inappropriately" under the table at some event, then ...

... turns to an FBI agent who she's gotten in contact with by way of him sending her shirtless pics of himself, who then ...

... arranges for an official FBI investigation to begin, which ...

... succeeds in convincing a judge to give authorization to hack into that other woman's email account in which ...

... the FBI detects nothing justifying a continuation of the investigation, but instead of ...

... shutting the whole operating down, goes public (via the GOP's house majority leader - a rather unusual channel, one would guess) with the most gossipy element of their findings: that the other woman had an affair with the above-mentioned general and current CIA director, who ...

... then steps down, thus ending a brilliant career of 40 years in disgrace.

Not that I would excuse Holder´s Machiavellian tactics either...it´s all in the "best" Washington tradition.

The responsible point is whether Obama has crafted a real(as yet undisclosed) Af-Pak long-term strategy or is just happy complaining about the ultimately insufficient COIN tactics Petraeus pushed on him, ready to cut and run.

".. he may now wish nothing more than to fade away, out of the limelight, like good soldiers before him."

Or, he could try Clinton's approach: deny the obvious, pretend nothing happened and proceed to supplement your pension by holding speaking engagements around the world for a million bucks a night.

Compared to Clinton, there is one thing in the General's favor: he won't have to fight his audience's inability to shake the image of seeing him in the Oval office, at his desk with his pants at his ankles.

Headline from TPM: Petraeus apparently most mentally-balanced person in his own scandal.

So we have his mistress, who decided to start anonymously threatening people as the best way to not draw attention. And then the threatened person contacted an over-involved FBI agent she knew, who got all put out at not being part of the investigation and raised a ruckus in Congress. The buck stops at Petraeus's zipper, but the number of 'for want of a nail' small details this is turning on is going to become a case study in Things Going Wrong.

When the heat surrounding the news on Petraeus's affair and sudden resignation dies down, the real issue will not be the affair but how the F.B.I. came to know about it in the first place. In this era of information technology, it is almost impossible for sex scandals to remain hidden, but recent developments in the case of Petraeus's affair reveal that the issue at stake here is the surveillance culture we currently live under. I recently read an article by Naomi Wolfe about career-ending extramarital affairs and how they reflect an even more concerning corruption and degradation within our government. It is a very quick, but very important read for anyone concerned about our government's surveillance strategy and how it has become normalized and accepted by our society: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sex-and-surveillance

While it's all circumstantial at the moment, there's the question of how Broadwell knew things about Benghazi that wasn't public information. Maybe she made them up or maybe she had other sources. While it's certainly jumping to conclusions, it's possible her relationship to Petraeus made her privy to unauthorized intel. It's something that should be looked into at the very least.

Dia, Participants in Fox are most certainly better dressed than, say those in Jerry Springer, which I watch to understand the entire spectrum of American entertainment. It is a fact they are there, as informative as Uncle Buckley's Firing Line. Nothing is to be missed.

"While it's all circumstantial at the moment, there's the question of how Broadwell knew things about Benghazi that wasn't public information."

Sure. However, rather than continuing to tilt at windmills, the GOP may want to focus more on realigning itself so that it can add value in constructive ways, and to avoid losing more House seats in 2012.

Still, to its credit, the more moderate GOP voices have begun the conversation, which I think is healthy.

Per David Frum -

“These people [conservative media] have made politics a theater for identity politics for a segment of America, rather than a way to solve collective problems.”

You've completely changed the subject. RR said nothing about GOP House in 2012. You know perfectly well his reply has merit.

WASHINGTON -- Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Sunday her committee will investigate the Federal Bureau of Investigation after it failed to inform them in advance of its findings on former CIA Director David Petraeus, who resigned Friday after admitting to an affair.

"We received no advance notice. It was like a lightning bolt," she told "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace.

One of the things the affair should spotlight about "America's most distinguished solider" is his mediocre war record. Also, there is his break of trust with the American people. His seedy personal behavior aside, he lived the high life off American taxpayers.

7) Trying to sound Churchillian? Then you should have written "have", not "has", "immorally", not "Immoral", "honor, not "Honor", "the Bible", not "bible", etc Learn how to write English and then come back... dude.

And you should be thankful, you just googled it and added a word to your vocabulary: exegesis.

It is very strange (and telling) that you would quote the Bible where Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane during His Passion to justify adultery and that such a person who commits adultery is honourable.

Matthew 26:36-41

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I go over there and pray."

He took along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to feel sorrow and distress.

Then he said to them, "My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch with me."

He advanced a little and fell prostrate in prayer, saying, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will."

When he returned to his disciples he found them asleep. He said to Peter, "So you could not keep watch with me for one hour?

Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

2) For starters, it was a jest and an irony. You have taken this too seriously.

3) I wasn't justifying anything because there's nothing to justify. What for you is "adultery", a terrible sin, for me is just a human action, and a very understandable one at that (love, sex, age, passion, etc). I respect General Petraeus as a person and as a four-star general of the USA, I would condemn him if he betrayed his country and revealed top secrets to any real or potential enemy, but I don't care if he sleeps with one woman or with two. The problem is the e-mails and all that, not sex or morals.

4) "telling" of what? Have you already pigeonholed me?

5) You can be a Christian if you like, I respect you just like I respect Jews Muslims, Zoroastrians and others, but do not try to impose your moral or religious beliefs on others who are not. "His Passion"... As a contrast with the previous "dude" you love capital letters, don't you? Your right, of course, but what for you is the Son of God who coexists in unity and is co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit, for me is just an obscure, semi-myhical Jewish rabbi who was NOT—I can assure you—born in Betlehem on 25th December 1 BCE, or rather the 8th day before the Kalends of January of the Year DCCLIII of the Foundation of Rome (I like capital letters, too).

6) "Vérité au-deçà des Pyrénées, erreur au-delà". Blaise Pascal, a Christian after all even if only because of a "pari", a wager or gambit, wrote this four centuries ago.

7) I will keep quoting from the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, the Qu'ran, the non-canonical or apocryphal Gospels, the Kalevala, the United States Declaration of Independence & Constitution, Augustine of Hippo, Tertullian, Pascal—I just did—. Athanasius of Alexandria, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, etc as often as I will and in any manner I like, provided that I don't manipulate the text.

I’ve enjoyed very much your reply; it has been some months now since I’ve read someone using the rhetoric from the same playbook you are using - it was amusing. Earlier you showed only a small glimmer (“telling”).

Also, I have no need to pigeonhole you (and definitely, I don’t take you seriously); you have “pigeonholed” yourself.

And also, I was amused when you wrote “provided that I don’t manipulate the text”. Of course that still allows you to take the text completely out of context. Then again; the playbook you are using probably does not instruct you that the text it uses is used out of context.

Well, since you have enjoyed very much my reply, you should be thankful to me. Cf. Colossians 3:15

Look Jiang Tai Gong, I don't use any "playbook", you apparently do. Unlike you, who need an organized religion or church to tell you what you must believe and what you must do, I am a free individual and a freethinker and I decide what I believe and what I do. I am a man, not a sheep. No country, no group, no political party, no family, no company, no church, no religion and no "playbook" condition what I think and what I do.

Of course you don't take me seriously, you only take seriously what your superiors and your religion/church tell you to take seriously. You remind me of Plato's cave, the allegory or analogy of the cave, for you certainly are in a cave like that. I don't expect you to even know this, you are too busy reading Matthew. Fortunately, there's Google.

You quoted me as having written,

""The Bible... I will quote it as I will in any manner I want..."

When what I wrote was,

"2) The Bible, unless it's a special modern version, is public domain and I will quote it as I will in any manner I want."

You MANIPULATED and edited my text (your "..." doesn't change this, because you even modified my sentence) so what kind of hypocrisy or double standard is this? In fact I expect it when I deal with people like you, but I will never get used to it. I didn't manipulate anything, I quoted from Matthew 26:41 " The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak". The first half of the verse was irrelevant to me in that context. Or are you telling me that if I quote ""My nights came to an end with a morning." adding "Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights" I am manipulating anything because I didn't quote what comes next: "The weather was dreadful. It was pouring, and the rain kept beating dismally against my windowpanes", or indeed the whole book? (And fortunately it's a short story, imagine if it was Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'!)

Do I have to repeat it? I decide what I quote and I decide the context, you don't decide anything for me, amongst other reasons because I don't take you seriously either. Fortunately it's 2012, not 1600, when Giordano Bruno was burnt alive in Rome just for having his own ideas. Bruno and thousands of people along the centuries.

You don't even understand what the principle of cause and effect is. You started this. You looked for me, I didn't look for you. If you had just added your own comment I wouldn't have read it (sorry, but you and your rigid beliefs bore me) or, even if I had done it, I don't think I would have bothered to reply. You had the nerve to lecture me, I did not, and if I am lecturing you now this is just as a reaction, Newton's Third Law of Motion (you won't find this in the Bible, I am afraid).

Has all this been too "rhetoric" for you? Well, this word has several meanings, you know, including:

The ability to use language effectively.

The art or science of all specialized literary uses of language in prose or verse, including the figures of speech.

The study of the effective use of language.

The art of prose in general as opposed to verse.

The art of using speech to persuade, influence, or please; oratory.

&c.

Finally, I remind you that this The Economist, not your parish.

Democracy in America
American politics

David Petraeus
A surprise departure

My comment was referred to General Petraeus and was totally on topic. I quoted Matthew because in MY opinion it was relevant—and it was a jest and an irony, anyway—just as I could have quoted Jefferson, Eisenwower, Nietzsche or Montaigne. It's YOU who have gone 100% off topic and have made of part ofthis thread an incredibly boring conversation about YOUR religion, quoting not just half a verse, but SIX full verses from Matthew. Your religion may be The Absolute Truth, your light and your main reason to live, I don't know, but try to understand that many other people respect but do NOT share your beliefs. Give them a break.

Yeah. Now the point is even beyond what actually did (or did not) happen in Benghazi.

A good oh so American extra-marital sex scandal overpowers geopolitics and is going to keep the story on the headlines for quite a while in the best of cases (I prefer, really, not to think about the worst of cases, who knew what and when and that sort of thing!)

If Petraeus told his embedded biographer what he shouldn't have told, we will see heads rolling and God only knows whom the last firewall will be. But then suspicion, that terrible Damocles sword, will linger over ALL the heads of the Obama administration.

Last week neocon Weekly Standard had a story headlined "Yhe Omertà Administration." Bad news for America, bad news for democracy and definitely bad news for Obama who has been a terrific Icon-in-Chief and a very poor Commander-in-Chief.

This is down to what went on in Benghazi and more importantly afterwards. Though could also be who this second woman is. If Petraeus, or Obama, had wanted Petraeus to stay, it would have taken five minutes, looking more or less repentant and remorseful at a podium, less if his wife shared the stage, to fix this.

You may be one of those people who are very comfortable with your favorite public servants' low standards but thank god that NOT ALL "Americans" share your disposition. I can see why you would have a problem understanding how one achieves honor, it is not something that can be "carefully crafted" as you put it, it is earned.

Paula Broadwell, the author of a biography on Petraeus and his mistress and confidante is a real looker. Much like Helen of Troy irresistible. It's not the first time a great man fell on his own sword for a vixen.